Altogether, One at a Time

by E. L. Konigsburg

  “But a record player can’t talk back,” she said, “or show you this.” Miss Natasha held out her hand. In it was the ugliest, smelliest looking blob that I had ever seen in my life. There were no words to describe it, so I said, “Yicchh.”

  She didn’t say anything, so I asked, “Did you damage this one, too?”

  “In a way, I did. I was trying to preserve what is in here. Inside here is the only thing that I was allowed to bring out of my country when I left. I should have known better than to think that adding layers of plastic could preserve all of my fine workmanship. A plain, simple but strong exterior would have been better.”

  “It stinks. It sure smells rotten. Is that Christy’s spit?”

  “No. Christy is still working on the locket. You see, the plastics that they had when I left my country were not nearly as refined as they are now. This is celluloid, and it is discolored by light, and it smells so bad because it once caught on fire. Well, actually, I tried to burn off the plastic, but I found that the whole thing was in danger of melting. There is nothing to do but to chip it away. Very carefully. A little bit at a time.”

  “Yicchh,” I explained. Miss Natasha continued holding her blob. “I don’t think that I want to bother with it,” I added.

  “Most people don’t want to,” she said.

  “Are you sure that Christy’s spit isn’t on it?”

  “I’m sure,” she said. “It’s messy to get all the way through to the good parts, but it’s worth it.”

  “Why don’t you peel away all the gunk by your-self?”

  “It is very difficult for me.”

  “Because of your arthritis?”

  “Partly. An d partly because I am not always sure that it is worth the trouble.”

  “Hunh! You just told me that it was worth it. Just this minute you told me that.”

  “But, of course, I can tell you that because for you it is. You are young, and you will have almost your whole life to enjoy what you will find inside. I have none of that anymore.”

  “Do you mean that when I get to what is inside that,” I said, pointing to her blob, “that you will give it to me? Is that what you mean when you say that I will have my whole life to enjoy it?”

  “No. That isn’t what I meant. What I have inside here is too valuable for me to give you. I can only let you see it. What do you think I am? A fairy god-mother?”

  “And what do you think I am? Your mother’s helper, Cinderella? Do you expect me to do all that work just to get a look at what’s inside?” 46

  “That’s what you expect of everyone you meet,” she said. “You expect everyone to see what is inside all that fat of yours. An d not everyone can take the time. But you can. You have the time.”

  “Well, I’m not about to do all the work,” I told her.

  “Even though you’ll have the image of what is inside with you ror all the rest of your life?”

  At that point in the dialogue I zonked my head to one side on the pillow and pretended that I had suddenly fallen asleep. Miss Natasha picked up her blob and walked out. She didn’t even bother flashing her light on the other beds. She sure didn’t earn her pay, I thought. Dialoguing with only two kids in a whole cabin. One stupid Friday night a week.

  I had lost three pounds at the next weigh-in. It was really three and one-fourth, but Miss Coolidge said that ounces don’t count. Miss Coolidge is as narrow-minded as her skinny hips.

  Well, my parents came to Parents Visiting Day. They always like to see if they are getting their money’s worth. To show them how lucky they were to have me for a daughter, I showed them two Lindas and one of the Robins. Also Christy Long. I noticed Christy showing me to her mother.

  I looked all over for Miss Natasha, but she wasn’t there. I even bothered to ask Christy if she had seen her today, and Christy took her thumb out of her mouth long enough to say that she had not.

  Some parents must have brought some kids some goodies, which the weigh-in the next Monday showed up. Miss Coolidge shook her narrow head, clicked her thin tongue and said to every single girl who didn’t lose any weight or who didn’t lose enough, “Did Santa Claus come to you early this year?” She said it to each one. Including Kim . Ha. Ha.

  I waited up for Miss Natasha on Friday, and after she finished with Christy, I pretended that I was asleep. Who was she that she should think that I would wait up for her? She sat on the edge of my bed, and I noticed that she was holding her blob. It wasn’t hard to notice; it stunk as bad as ever. 48

  “Aren’t you even going to ask if I want dialogue?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “All I want to know is why you didn’t show up on Parents Visiting Day.”

  “I’ll show up when they have Parents Visiting Night:9

  “Do you still want me to peel that gunk for you?” I asked.

  “No,” she said, “I want you to peel it for you.”

  “Aha! “ I said. “You mean that you’ve thought it over, and you are going to give it to me after all.”

  “I told you that I am no fairy godmother. I do want you to work on it. It is worth it. But you must believe that yourself.”

  “Will you help?” I asked.

  “I’ve already helped as much as I can.”

  I picked up Miss Natasha’s smelly old blob and began prodding it with my finger. “You know,” I said, “you ought to bring the watch so that I can keep track of the time and you ought to bring the locket so that I can listen to it as I work on this.”

  “I’ll bring them. I’m glad you like them so much. As a matter of fact, I have to go back to Christy’s bed to get the locket. She’s still working on it. Now you must start alone. I’ll be back shortly.”

  “Why don’t you just leave it in my little old shop-here, ma’am. I’ll give you a claim check, and I’ll call you when it’s done.”

  “Clara,” Miss Natasha said, “if you had all day to do it, you’d put it off and put it off, and it would never get done.”

  So I began the gruesome job, letting my mind wander. Miss Natasha returned to my bed and watched me work a little while longer before she picked up her blob and walked out. I had gotten so interested in picking away at that mess that I forgot that she had the locket on when she had returned from Christy’s bed. I was sorry that I missed another chance to see and hear it.

  I had decided to be friendly; that’s why I signed it Fondly.

  Even the smell of Miss Natasha’s burnt plastic ball didn’t bother me anymore. Maybe because I was so close to the end and there wasn’t much of it left. Maybe because Miss Natasha brought the ring and the locket now and that helped to take my mind off it.

  I finished on the last Friday before I went home. The week before the plastic coat had gotten so thin that I was able to see what was inside. It was gold and the size of an airmail stamp. I peeled away the last of the plastic and saw that the gold was a tiny book whose cover was jewelled and locked.

  “I’ll bet it is a miniature Bible,” I said.

  Miss Natasha was as anxious as I was to get to it. “Open it! Open it!” she urged.

  I did.

  “Oh. Ohhhhhhh! Oh. Ohhh,” I repeated, which is not at all like me. “I know now that you are going to give it to me, after all. That is me. That’s a thin Clara. You made it just for me, didn’t you?” I looked up at Miss Natasha with grateful tears in my eyes, which is also not at all like me. “You put all that mess on it so that I would have to realize that I’m not plain on the outside like the watch and I’m not damaged like the locket. I’m fat and a little nasty and have to take all that off by myself so that people can see the beauty inside. I know now, dear Miss Natasha, that you are going to give me the tiny gold book, the greatest treasure of them all.”

  “No, I am not,” Miss Natasha said. “I told you that I’m no fairy godmother. Make your own pictures.” An d with that, Miss Natasha took the book from me and left.

  When my parents came to take me home from camp, I could tell that they wer
e pleased with the way I looked, so I said, “I need new clothes. Nothing fits.”

  They had another assembly for parents to tell them about how they should help us by making only skinny suppers and by not having a lot of snacks except cottage cheese and carrots around the house. I looked for Miss Natasha at the assembly. I wanted to say a different goodbye to her. I couldn’t find her.

  After the assembly broke up, I separated from my parents and found Christy Lon g to ask her if she had seen Miss Natasha, and she hadn’t either. There was nothing to do but to ask Miss Coolidge. I should have written my parents that Miss Coolidge was the fourth thing that made me sick. I thought that my mother and father ought to meet Miss Natasha. An d I did owe her another goodbye, a better goodbye. I asked Miss Coolidge if she had seen Miss Natasha.

  “Miss Who?” she asked.

  “Miss Natasha, the evening counsellor,” I said.

  “We have no Miss Natasha,” Miss Coolidge said.

  “As a matter of fact, we have no evening counsellor.”

  I looked at Miss Coolidge. She was skinny. He r legs were skinny. He r elbows were skinny. He r brain was skinny. I stared into her skinny eyes.

  “Miss Natasha, you say?” she said. “Years ago, Camp To Ke Ro No was an Arts and Crafts camp, and we had someone here named Miss Natasha. She taught jewelry making. She claimed that she used to work for the royal Russian court.”

  “Where do you think she is now? “ I asked.

  “Oh, she’s dead. She died. As a matter of fact, it was after she died that our arts and crafts enrollment went down so badly that we had to change the camp. If Miss Natasha were still with us, we never would have gone into the beef business.”

  It wasn’t because Miss Coolidge called me beef that I knew that I would never return to Camp Fat, and it wasn’t because she told me Miss Natasha was dead that I knew that I would never return to Camp Fat. It was because of Miss Natasha that I knew that I would never need to.

  Momma at the Pearly Gates

  illustrated by Gail E. Haley

  MY MOMMA TELLS about the time that she got bused. She lived in a town in Ohio that year, and everybody walked to school except Momma who took a bus. An d everybody went home for lunch in that town in that year except Momma, and that, too, was because she took a bus.

  The reason that Momma was being bused was because of Mrs. Clark, who was her teacher. One of her teachers. When Momma’s folks moved from one part of town to the other, Mrs. Clark said that she thought that it would be a shame for all of Momma’s smarts to go down to that other school with all the poor colored kids. O f course, Momma was poor at that time, too, and she was as black then as she is now (Momma and I are just about as black as each other), but Mrs. Clark thought that it would be better for Momma to stay put for the rest of the school year. Mrs. Clark spoke to the school principal and got special permission for Momma to stay at Franklin School where everyone appreciated her.

  That’s how Momma came to take the city bus to school everyday. Her folks bought her a book of bus tickets, costing four cents a ride. She carried her lunch to Franklin School everyday, and Momma never minded. She knew that she was loved.

  When I ask Momma what it was like back in those days, she tells me that they didn’t have TV . Well, I know that! She tells me that they had radios but the radios were mostly pieces of furniture that you kept at home and not transistors that you carried around with you. When I ask her what else, she says that a lot more white people were poor then.

  When I try to picture Momma in those days she says that I am still wrong and that I should re-member that she was, after all, a city child.

  Then she says, “Does knowing that we had saddle shoes and zippers help any?” An d I tell her, yes, it helps.

  I mentioned that Mrs. Clark was only one of Momma’s teachers. The other was Miss Mayer. Each one of them taught fifth grade. Everyone liked Mrs. Clark better than Miss Mayer. Miss Mayer had been to Europe twice, so she taught geography and history to both fifth grades and Mrs. Clark taught English and arithmetic to both. The kids stayed in the same room, and the teachers moved back and forth across the hall. Now, all that shows what the difference was between those times and these.

  1. Nowadays, geography and history are called social studies.

  2. Nowadays, sharing teachers is called team teaching.

  3. Nowadays, I have already had three teachers who have been to Europe, and I am only in the fifth grade, too.

  4. Nowadays, they make the kids and not the teachers change classes.

  Momma had been busing for two weeks, being all alone in the Franklin School during lunch hour and enjoying it. She visited the first grade room where they had white lines painted on the top of the blackboard all around the room. In that room there were big pieces of chalk which Momma was afraid to use and small pieces which she was not. She practiced making the beautiful alphabet and got so that she could write just like it.

  Two days the weather was nice, and she sat on the down end of a seesaw and ate her lunch. All alone, and proud to be it.

  Momma says that the blackboards at the Franklin School were the most beautiful she has ever seen. As a matter of fact, she says that that is the first time she ever thought black is beautiful. The blackboards were real slate and high, so high that only Mrs. Clark who was very tall could reach the top edge. The blackboards in the Franklin School went all around the room—except, on the side where there were windows. The windows, too, were tall, so tall that they had to be opened and closed with a pole. Momma says that when the sun came in at the window, it glared on part of the front blackboard and that then you couldn’t see what was written there. Mrs. Clark or Miss Mayer would move to the side and everyone would twist around in his seat because the seats were bolted to the floor. You could keep track of the seasons by watching how late in the day the sun glared on the front left part of the black-board.

  Momma says that there was a blackboard even in the back part of the room, and I say that that black-board must have been pretty useless, what with no one being able to turn his seat around, what with them being bolted to the floor. Momma says that the blackboard in the back of the room turned out to be the least useless one. When I ask her what she means by that, she says she’ll come to it, and kids today are always too frantic to get to the end. When Momma says “kids today” she always just means me.

  When Momma visits my school, she looks at our blackboards—and then she looks at me with pity.

  After Momma had been bused for two weeks, Roseann Dolores Sansevino began carrying her lunch to school. She was in the fourth grade and walked to school and walked home. She was considered responsible, so she was allowed to carry her lunch. For some reason she had to. When I ask Momma why Roseann Dolores Sansevino couldn’t go home for lunch, Momma says that people didn’t ask so many questions in those days.

  Miss Thompson, the fourth grade teacher, brought Roseann up to Mrs. Clark’s room so that the girls could eat together. Roseann had long braids, each one as thick as her wrist and the ends of them were curled below the rubber bands. She held her eyes down shyly as Miss Thompson introduced them to each other. Then they were left alone in Mrs. Clark’s room.

  “What did you bring for lunch?” Momma asked. Roseann Dolores Sansevino said, “Shut up, you dirty nigger.”

  Momma went up to Roseann, grabbed one braid in one hand and the other in the other, jerked first one and then the other and said, “Ding Dong Dago.”

  And even then Momma didn’t shut up as Roseann had told her to. She went to Mrs. Clark’s desk and sat at it and unwrapped her lunch, scrunching the waxed paper. Momma says that there wasn’t any plastic wrap or Baggies then. She had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich; she chomped it. Then she sat back in Mrs. Clark’s chair and sucked peanut butter out of her teeth as much as she could. An d as loud as she could. Momma says that in those days the peanut butter was always oily at the top when you bought it, and the first sandwiches were oily and the last ones were dry. That da
y her sandwich had been from the bottom and was on white bread, besides. Momma says that those were two-gallon sandwiches because that’s how much water it took to wash them off the roof of your mouth.

  Roseann looked out the window and would only now and then turn in Momma’s direction, and when she did, it was to look disgusted. Momma got up from Mrs. Clark’s chair and walked to the door and said, “If you need me for anything, I’ll be in the teachers’ lounge.”

  Momma says that in those days no one was ever allowed in the teachers’ lounge. No one even delivering a message to someone in the teachers’ lounge was allowed in; the message was shoved under the door. Momma says that teachers used to not be allowed to smoke cigarettes, and so they hid when they did.

  Momma didn’t know that the teachers’ lounge would be locked even during lunch hour. When she found out that it was, she went into the third grade classroom across the hall and waited. She decided to wait long enough for Roseann to get the idea that she had completed her business. As she sat in that third grade room, in the back, away from the door, she noticed on the back blackboard

  The please do not erase was so that the janitors would not wash it off when they cleaned the room at night.

  Momma was studying that map when she heard footsteps down the hall. She stayed very still and heard someone jiggle the door to the teachers’ lounge, then more footsteps heading back toward Mrs. Clark’s room. Momma waited about five minutes more, and then she headed back toward Mrs. Clark’s room.

  “Was that you trying the door while I was in the teachers’ lounge?” she asked.

  “So what if it was?” Roseann replied.

  “Door knob jiggling won’t get you through the door of the teachers’ lounge any more than it will get you through the Pearly Gates of Heaven.”

  “I bet there’s no niggers in Heaven,” Roseann said.